Coronavirus: Chinese wet markets still operation despite COVID-19

Kivaro · 30-03-2020 02:06PM

Consumerism. Do we really need all this stuff?
Personally, I live the minimalist lifestyle as much as possible. And it does reduce a lot of stress in life. Minimalist doesn't mean doing without, it just means doing without the excesses.

And from a thread yesterday, I believe that Ireland should become as self-sufficient as possible, and do it in a conscientious and environmentally-friendly manner. The pandemic gives the country a great opportunity to become self-sufficient without requiring the supply chains of other countries.
We can learn a lot from this current challenge, and become a better country because of it.

Thelonious Monk · 30-03-2020 02:10PM

Kivaro wrote: »

Consumerism. Do we really need all this stuff?
Personally, I live the minimalist lifestyle as much as possible. And it does reduce a lot of stress in life. Minimalist doesn't mean doing without, it just means doing without the excesses.

And from a thread yesterday, I believe that Ireland should become as self-sufficient as possible, and do it in a conscientious and environmentally-friendly manner. The pandemic gives the country a great opportunity to become self-sufficient without requiring the supply chains of other countries.
We can learn a lot from this current challenge, and become a better country because of it.

Do we need to diversify our farming? I'm pretty sure nearly all of our land is used for beef and dairy, and 90% of that is exported. Something like 50% of all fruit and veg in Ireland is grown in North County Dublin alone, so maybe we should be doing more of this in order to become self sufficient.
I think when they say Ireland is one of the most self sufficient food countries in the world, it is down to calories, so we'd be fine, just eating a lot of beef and baby formula.

kenmm · 30-03-2020 02:22PM

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Yup, I was late to the smartphone party but I have managed to never actually buy one. There's always a friend or relative who gets a shiny new one and will give you their old one.

Now..having said what I said.. I just seen a great deal on a new phone to replace my 3 year old broken screen phone..

jam_mac_jam · 30-03-2020 02:28PM

SuperRabbit wrote: »

SARS, MERS, Foot and Mouth, BSE, Covid-19, meat meat meat meat. This could have started anywhere that farms meat, all it takes is for livestock to come into contact with wild animals. (Also pigs and birds seem to be especially likely to get viruses that we can get even without contact with wild animals?) Let's accept that sanitation and refrigeration etc. are worldwide issues that effect the whole world and maybe start a worldwide international government fund and program to make sure that poor people in every country have access to what they need to keep livestock and meat production safe.

We have international organizations that monitor nuclear power plants to make sure they are safe, we need them for this too. Clearly it's potentially more dangerous than a nuclear meltdown.

Don't act all holier than thou because you can afford to eat pork that comes from a farm in a rich country. Poor people need protein sources. All these pandemics will end when we can get reliably them that protein in a safe way. Ok, a lentil never caused a pandemic, but it's clear from western countries that people can eat meat without pandemics, but it requires a lot of regulation. And it requires richer people to pay for it.

Maybe the massive massive subsidies that are given to beef farmers in the EU to keep the price of beef artificially low could be spent on a fund to keep meat production around the world safe?

Poor people didn't start this. Exotic animals are a status symbol not poor people struggling for protein.

B.A._Baracus · 30-03-2020 02:30PM

owlbethere wrote: »

When was the last time you saw a market here in Ireland or anywhere in Europe that had cages of pigs and other animals together?
When was the last time you saw a market here at home with live animals and dead animals layed out together for customers to buy?
When was the last time you saw pig being cooked alive here in Ireland?

https://youtu.be/2voAYkH7rUo

Please stop comparing Irelands farming, slaughtering and market practices to that of China's.

What the!? ... that video

They are more animal than the animals they are cooking!

30-03-2020 02:34PM

I think we could end up seeing the opposite to any reduction on our reliance on cheap Asian manufacturing and food, with so many people going to be out of work and money with a struggling economy, we are going to be desperate to get more cheap stuff not less.

Marsden35 · 30-03-2020 02:43PM

Just a random thought, but should intelligence agencies from western countries be infiltrating China to a greater degree to keep track of any future contagion rumours so that we can halt Chinese tourism quickly as soon as we hear something?

We know the CCP will lie again the next time someone contracts a virus after drinking a ferret milkshake through a civet cat penis straw.

This will happen again if nothing changes.

fawlty682 · 30-03-2020 02:51PM

Ridiculous. Stop eating Chinese.. This plague is going to cost thousands of lives and jobs and set back the world by years.

SuperRabbit · 30-03-2020 02:52PM

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Poor people didn't start this. Exotic animals are a status symbol not poor people struggling for protein.

This has nothing to do with exotic animals. There is nothing special about exotic animals. Look at swine flu and bird flu. Any type of animal can pass a virus onto humans, look at all the other major epidemics we've had, none came from exotic animals (well, SARS-cov I guess.. not to be confused with SARS-cov-2). It doesn't matter to your immune system that a snake or a bat is "exotic" and a pig or a chicken isn't, the pigs themselves can give you a virus or they can come into contact with another animal and it can get to you from that.

MERS was a coronavirus that killed 30% of people who got it, it was LUCK that meant it wasn't very contagious. Swine flu killed maybe 500,000 people, it was very contagious but not very deadly. Again, LUCK. And it came from pigs that weren't kept properly.
Swine flu was also the most likely cause of the Spanish flu that killed maybe 100 million people. (top estimates given). PIGS. Not exotic. Deadly and contagious and at a time with unprecedented travel. Rotten luck.

Yeah, there are animals, like dogs and cats say, whose immune systems are so different from ours that we are unlikely to ever get a pandemic from them, even if we decide to eat them (please don't eat your pets the supermarkets are still open). But we can't act holier than though when we are just as likely to get a deadly pandemic like this from a chicken or a pig as from a civet. The difference isn't the animals being "exotic" it's about regulation on how you keep meat and livestock and whether or not that regulation is enforced

Captcha · 30-03-2020 02:55PM

Marsden35 wrote: »

Just a random thought, but should intelligence agencies from western countries be infiltrating China to a greater degree to keep track of any future contagion rumours so that we can halt Chinese tourism quickly as soon as we hear something?

We know the CCP will lie again the next time someone contracts a virus after drinking a ferret milkshake through a civet cat penis straw.

This will happen again if nothing changes.

Wonder what CCP China need to hide?:

China announced on Tuesday (March 17th, 2020) that it would expel American journalists working for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. It also demanded that those outlets, as well as the Voice of America and Time magazine, provide the Chinese government with detailed information about their operations.

The announcement, made by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came weeks after the Trump administration limited to 100 the number of Chinese citizens who can work in the United States for five state-run Chinese news organizations that are widely considered propaganda outlets.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/business/media/china-expels-american-journalists.html

Rows Grower · 30-03-2020 02:56PM

[QUOTE=fawlty682;113000612]Ridiculous. Stop eating Chinese.. This plague is going to cost thousands of lives and jobs and set back the world by years.[/QUOTE]

Whoa, whoa there!

Real easy now.

I'd consider swapping some family members for a beef chop suey with fried rice.

owlbethere · 30-03-2020 02:58PM

Marsden35 wrote: »

We know the CCP will lie again the next time someone contracts a virus after drinking a ferret milkshake through a civet cat penis straw.

Belly full of laughs here at this - the ferret milkshake with a civet cat penis straw

Captcha · 30-03-2020 03:00PM

SuperRabbit wrote: »

This has nothing to do with exotic animals. There is nothing special about exotic animals. Look at swine flu and bird flu. Any type of animal can pass a virus onto humans, look at all the other major epidemics we've had, none came from exotic animals (well, SARS-cov I guess.. not to be confused with SARS-cov-2). It doesn't matter to your immune system that a snake or a bat is "exotic" and a pig or a chicken isn't, the pigs themselves can give you a virus or they can come into contact with another animal and it can get to you from that.

MERS was a coronavirus that killed 30% of people who got it, it was LUCK that meant it wasn't very contagious. Swine flu killed maybe 500,000 people, it was very contagious but not very deadly. Again, LUCK. And it came from pigs that weren't kept properly.
Swine flu was also the most likely cause of the Spanish flu that killed maybe 100 million people. (top estimates given). PIGS. Not exotic.

Yeah, there are animals, like dogs and cats say, whose immune systems are so different from ours that we are unlikely to ever get a pandemic from them, even if we decide to eat them (please don't eat your pets the supermarkets are still open). But we can't act holier than though when we are just as likely to get a deadly pandemic like this from a chicken or a pig as from a civet. The difference isn't the animals being "exotic" it's about regulation on how you keep meat and livestock and whether or not that regulation is enforced

Some animals absolutely have higher risk than others, especially animals like bats and then bats sharing confined spaces with any other number of random animals that would never be in contact naturally... Then on top of that excretions and blood mixing with alive and dead ones and humans in China/Asia mixing it all together in a wonderful soup of harmony... Until that harmony is no longer safe and then we have COVID Virus (CCP Virus)

Wibbs · 30-03-2020 03:04PM

riffmongous wrote: »

I think we could end up seeing the opposite to any reduction on our reliance on cheap Asian manufacturing and food, with so many people going to be out of work and money with a struggling economy, we are going to be desperate to get more cheap stuff not less.

Well here in Ireland food is much less an issue with our small population and ability in a pinch to be able to feed ourselves.

SuperRabbit · 30-03-2020 03:04PM

Captcha wrote: »

Some animals absolutely have higher risk than others, especially animals like bats and then bats sharing confined spaces with any other number of random animals that would never be in contact naturally... Then on top of that excretions and blood mixing with alive and dead ones and humans in China/Asia mixing it all together in a wonderful soup of harmony... Until that harmony is no longer safe and then we have COVID Virus (CCP Virus)

Thank you so much for agreeing with me on what I thought was incredibly obvious but no one here seems to understand.
We have bats in Ireland. If you aren't careful they easily mix with pigs and chickens, who themselves are a risk anyway. But there's all kinds of things to stop that here. We need those regulations internationally and we need to do something to help every government make sure they are enforced, regardless of the government's resources or how much of a priority they consider it.

whisky_galore · 30-03-2020 03:07PM

fawlty682 wrote: »

Ridiculous. Stop eating Chinese...

Eating from Chinese restaurants or eating Chinese people?

Marsden35 · 30-03-2020 03:10PM

That infectious disease expert on Rogan said the Chinese markets have animals known to carry disease (like ferrets and Civet cats) and they just pile all of these on top of each other. It's like they want different viruses to mate and come up with a super virus ffs.

Here I am always making sure my eggs are cooked through, and they're dipping live mice in ketchup.

Un1corn · 30-03-2020 03:11PM

Went to China for work for 4 years in 2012.I really enjoyed the novelty of it for a while and even met my wife there but the longer you spend there the more frustrating the place becomes.

China was always a brutal authoritarian dictatorship under the Communist Party, however under Xi Jinping, they are returning to North Korea levels of insanity. I was there for the end of the Hu Jintao era and when Xi Jinping took power things just started becoming bizarre. Propaganda posters started going up everywhere telling everyone to love the party. Internet censorship ramped up and is continously getting worse. Milk scandals. Concentration camps. Genocide in Tibet. Organ harversting of dissidents. Bullying Taiwan. The are also reneging on the One Country Two Systems principal promised to Hong Kong.

The Communist Party are trying to turn themselves into global hedgemons and it is frustrating that we in the west are so blinded to this. I am firmly now of the belief we really need to decouple our economy from them. The only claim the party have to legitimacy is that they have brought China some economic success although this is disputed by many scholars. The Communist Party destroyed the country so much they could only improve by opening up the economy. Chinese transformation isn't all as breathtaking as it is often made out to be either. Their growth is just big becauase the country is huge but if you look at the quality of the growth it leads a lot to be desired. For example lots of their GDP is from real estate projects that will fall apart in 2 years. Once the economic growth dries up the party are probably gonna be toast.

We need to move our economy away from them. Their values do not align with ours. They are a collectivist and only care about face and money above all else. There is no such thing as leisure. It's all money money money and showing off. It is the most racist country I have ever been to and the party are to blame. They fuel nationalist xenophobic hysteria and blame everything on foreigners. China is actively trying to sabotage democracy and to promote their own model as one of success to keep the party in place. It sickens me to see Chinese students here in Europe openly promoting the Communist party and dismissing all criticism of China as racist. China itself has many hotels bars and restaurants with signs outside saying "no foreigners". I know a guy from South Africa in China and he is white. When asked where he is from the Chinese people regularly respond with phrases such as "Why are you not black?" and "It's good you are not black. Black people have disease". Chinese people believe in this racial hierarchy where they are at the top but they have been humiliated by the West for hundreds of years. If you are not white or Han Chinese you are dirt.

Even the Chinese you meet in Europe and the US are all spying on each other and reporting each other to the embassies. It is like the GDR. Right now because of Corona Virus the party is seeding the idea that the virus started in Italy and/or the USA. The ****ty communist system where everything is covered up led to this mess but if you read their media it is praising and lording over China and the role model for success and the party. They claim the virus
is under control and Chinese people are telling me here in Germany that Germany needs to be more like China with strong government who can tackle this. As a democracy we stand no chance etc etc. These people have lived in Germany for 10 years in many cases and they are still spouting the party lines. If you criticise China they call you racist. Decades of violence, untruths, progaganda has left the Mainland Chinese in this infantile state where they can't think for themselves or tell right from wrong.

By trading with them we are funding an absolutley brutal state and but we turn a blind eye on it for cheap goods. I am really convinced the only way we can make them grow up is to do a full trade embargo. Close all factories. Send the Chinese back who have been living here for years to live in China. And let them enjoy the Chinese system. It's the only way I think we can collapse it. If we knew what happened in Nazi Germany we would have probably not tolerated it.
I don't know why we tolerate China.

jam_mac_jam · 30-03-2020 03:30PM

SuperRabbit wrote: »

This has nothing to do with exotic animals. There is nothing special about exotic animals. Look at swine flu and bird flu. Any type of animal can pass a virus onto humans, look at all the other major epidemics we've had, none came from exotic animals (well, SARS-cov I guess.. not to be confused with SARS-cov-2). It doesn't matter to your immune system that a snake or a bat is "exotic" and a pig or a chicken isn't, the pigs themselves can give you a virus or they can come into contact with another animal and it can get to you from that.

MERS was a coronavirus that killed 30% of people who got it, it was LUCK that meant it wasn't very contagious. Swine flu killed maybe 500,000 people, it was very contagious but not very deadly. Again, LUCK. And it came from pigs that weren't kept properly.
Swine flu was also the most likely cause of the Spanish flu that killed maybe 100 million people. (top estimates given). PIGS. Not exotic. Deadly and contagious and at a time with unprecedented travel. Rotten luck.

Yeah, there are animals, like dogs and cats say, whose immune systems are so different from ours that we are unlikely to ever get a pandemic from them, even if we decide to eat them (please don't eat your pets the supermarkets are still open). But we can't act holier than though when we are just as likely to get a deadly pandemic like this from a chicken or a pig as from a civet. The difference isn't the animals being "exotic" it's about regulation on how you keep meat and livestock and whether or not that regulation is enforced

My point was a counter to say that it was poverty that caused this. I never made any argument that you can't have a pandemic from pigs or chickens, I obviously know this.

I don't agree that the variety of animal has no effect. If you have a larger selection of animals live and in close proximity then the risk of new viruses go up. It is a combination of unsanitary practices and the variety of animals.

auspicious · 30-03-2020 03:41PM

A stand against the threat wetmarkets pose time and again to soceity should not be conflated with racism.
The cheapest meats we buy here come from factory farms 'down-the-road'. These too are well known for the potential of an outbreak (not even mentioning the consumption of these sickly animals).
Slaughterhouses too can spread zoonoses from parasites, bacteria etc. Slaughterhouse workers are exposed to all sorts, all well documented.

Thelonious Monk · 30-03-2020 03:52PM

Recent outbreak of bird flu in Ireland. Not contagious to humans but just shows you oir farming practices aren't immune to outbreaks either.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/bird-flu-outbreak-confirmed-in-co-monaghan-poultry-flock-1.4200299

Ulmus · 30-03-2020 04:03PM

Very well said, Un1corn. There's never any criticism in Ireland of the barbaric regime in China. We get a Disney-fied sham from UCD Confucius Institute and Dublin City Council with Chinese Lunar Year flags raised along the Liffey.

topmanamillion · 30-03-2020 04:08PM

NaFirinne wrote: »

Can anyone think of any reason they should remain Open? Shut them down in all the countries who allow them.

Most that thought this would be an end to wet markets are just a bit clueless and have probably been following one too many Greta Thunberg tweets.
They're a source of cheap meat for people who can't afford beef,lamb, pork or even chicken.
The bushmeat trade operates all over the world and anywhere it is, poverty usually is too.
Not saying I agree with them but that's why they're there and will remain open in China and all over the world. .

Muahahaha · 30-03-2020 04:22PM

Un1corn wrote: »

The Communist Party are trying to turn themselves into global hedgemons and it is frustrating that we in the west are so blinded to this.

Yeah its a huge problem and its not helped by the main actor the US/Trump adopting a hands off and insular America First foreign policy. A Chinese diplomat recently gave a speech where they said the CCP love Trump because he is a deal maker who doesnt care less what the Chinese do within their own borders.

You only have to look at the recent Hong Kong protests for democracy. Over 2 million people hit the streets to protest the CCP and the west just sits back and says next to nothing. Here were brave people standing up to the worlds largest dictators and putting their lives on the line but instead of getting support from the west all they got out of so called democratic western leaders was fluffy language saying that they are "concerned" and "monitoring the situation" :rolleyes:

Hong Kong was a great opportunity to see if the CCP could have been destabilised by spreading the protests across the border and into the mainland. But the west stood back and said nothing. At the end of the day its in all our interests that there is a democratic revolution in China and opportunities like dont come along all that often.

jmayo · 30-03-2020 04:56PM

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Pigs in Ireland don't see the light of day from birth to death, sounds pretty abhorrent to me. The thought of paying more for meat and eating less of it doesn't wash with the Irish public though, and that would be necessary if we wanted our animals treated better. So I kind of thing this criticism of China is a bit rich coming from us.

I agree some of our pig production is industrialised farming that you would find in the US.
But we don't go rounding up endangered species such as sea otters, Red Squirrels, pine martins and selling them out of cages in squares in towns and villages throughout the country like China.

And neither do we get others around the world to slaughter animals for their penises or horns so that we might get a hardon ourselves.

Our animal husbandry for the most part is pretty good, because farmers have copped on that a) they lose money through animal losses and b) if found out they get penalised by authorities or they can't sell their animals and c) some farmers actually genuinely care about their animals as they are not fooking monsters.

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Do we need to diversify our farming? I'm pretty sure nearly all of our land is used for beef and dairy, and 90% of that is exported. Something like 50% of all fruit and veg in Ireland is grown in North County Dublin alone, so maybe we should be doing more of this in order to become self sufficient.
I think when they say Ireland is one of the most self sufficient food countries in the world, it is down to calories, so we'd be fine, just eating a lot of beef and baby formula.

We have always had horticulture in that area, primarily due to soils, climate and closeness to huge market.
A lot of the land in Ireland is not suitable for horticulture or tillage.
How many times do we have to tell you this?

Try growing some of that stuff in parts of Mayo and Galway and see how long you would last. :rolleyes:

Now one of the big differences on farms over last 50 years is that they have become very specialised.
Years ago farmers reared animals, grew most of their own veg and some of their own fruit.
That has changed where it is now cheaper and less hassle to buy it all in a big supermarket.
Besides farmers like everyone else has grown accustomed to more exotic fruit and veg and at out of season times as well.

And I bet you will find those horticulture enterprises in North County Dublin don't have pigs, chickens, cows, sheep or goats being reared.
No they don't because it is cheaper for them and less hassle to buy that stuff in the supermarket.

And as I have said countless times, we are relatively good at rearing cattle, sheep i.e. ruminants, whereas Belize is good at growing bananas, Florida is good at growing oranges, France is good at growing grapes and Spain is good at growing olives.

Yurt2 · 30-03-2020 05:03PM

topmanamillion wrote: »

Most that thought this would be an end to wet markets are just a bit clueless and have probably been following one too many Greta Thunberg tweets.
They're a source of cheap meat for people who can't afford beef,lamb, pork or even chicken.
The bushmeat trade operates all over the world and anywhere it is, poverty usually is too.
Not saying I agree with them but that's why they're there and will remain open in China and all over the world. .

China is at a stage of development where it has a sophisticated food supply chain, and their protein needs are adequately served by both conventional farming and quality imports.

These wet markets are a sop to rouge exotic animal traffickers, the CCP has full knowledge of the scale of activities, and if they don't learn lessons now, it's because they don't want to learn them.

They're thumbing their nose at the world in not cracking down hard on these markets.

Captcha · 30-03-2020 05:39PM

Yurt! wrote: »

China is at a stage of development where it has a sophisticated food supply chain, and their protein needs are adequately served by both conventional farming and quality imports.

These wet markets are a sop to rouge exotic animal traffickers, the CCP has full knowledge of the scale of activities, and if they don't learn lessons now, it's because they don't want to learn them.

They're thumbing their nose at the world in not cracking down hard on these markets.

Yes and its sick, but in character for ccp

B.A._Baracus · 30-03-2020 05:47PM

These wet markets should be banned.
Sars is believed to have originated from one. Heck, even the fictional Hollywood movie Contagion based it's virus from a Chinese market.

What is with China?

*Edit*
Came across another video of a man throwing a dog into a boiling pot. Nothing fake about that video. Really shouldn't be looking at it. It's messed up

No compassion what so ever. Bad enough you want to eat a dog but you can't put it out of its misery before hand? Nah... That be too kind.

Animals.

auspicious · 30-03-2020 06:05PM

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

These wet markets should be banned.
Sars is believed to have originated from one. Heck, even the fictional Hollywood movie Contagion based it's virus from a Chinese market.

What is with China?

*Edit*
Came across another video of a man throwing a dog into a boiling pot. Nothing fake about that video. Really shouldn't be looking at it. It's messed up

No compassion what so ever. Bad enough you want to eat a dog but you can't put it out of its misery before hand? Nah... That be too kind.

Animals.

Worldwide attitudes.
Same thing can be seen happening in Mexico City vids, though with pigs.

lainey_d_123 · 30-03-2020 06:09PM

topmanamillion wrote: »

Most that thought this would be an end to wet markets are just a bit clueless and have probably been following one too many Greta Thunberg tweets.
They're a source of cheap meat for people who can't afford beef,lamb, pork or even chicken.
The bushmeat trade operates all over the world and anywhere it is, poverty usually is too.
Not saying I agree with them but that's why they're there and will remain open in China and all over the world. .

It's as if it's impossible to get protein from non-meat sources.

I didn't realise it was a human right to consume any meat you wanted, causing hundreds of thousands of people around the world to die needlessly.

Well, as long as the poor Chinese are grand, and they get a nice lunch, that's all that matters, eh?

Coronavirus: Chinese wet markets still operation despite COVID-19

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